I came across this article in a group that concerns itself with American evangelical Christian culture. I didn’t find it the least bit offensive, and while I think it’s way too brief and coming from a position of significant naiveté, I have no ill will against the author. She seems perfectly pleasant. My biggest gripe is that the phone number of the super cute blond girl in the picture was not provided (NB no wedding ring).
“4 suggestions for talking with ‘nones.'” For those of you who don’t know, “nones” is jargon in the religious demography circles as a catch-all for atheists, agnostics, non-believers, and people who don’t affiliate themselves with any other religious institution. It is not meant to be disparaging (some people in the group I found this on took offense to the label). The demographic is increasing in number extremely rapidly, just recently hitting the 20% mark in 2014 (maybe 2013), after being only 15% in 2007. I know 5% doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s nearly 20 million people dropping a religious affiliation in less than a decade. This is a very huge deal in churches, who are in a tizzy about it, and if you know anyone in the industry, they have an opinion on it. For more on the topic, I very much recommend an organization called the Barna Group, and a book published by the guys who founded it, UnChristian. The organization seems to be affiliated with evangelical Christianity, but nonetheless, their stats are very solid, and they present the information quite clearly.
The author, a former “none” herself, offers some tips as to how to bring them into the fold. Her third and fourth point are eminently sensible. I think those would come as well-received to anyone. Her first and second point are useless. They are not bad points in the sense that they will be received negatively, so it’s not as if they give me any concern, it’s just that they won’t be effective. These are all arguments that only work after someone has found religion. No one is going to pick up Kierkegaard and make the leap to Catholicism–although I’d recommend Kierkegaard myself just in general. And that’s fine. Aquinas and Augustine are certainly worth a read regardless. And I commend her for having some very legitimate writers/thinkers in the list. Religious discussion is a huge hobby for me. I’ve entrenched myself into the thick of conversion arguments before. In my experience, reason is never what converts people, it’s always emotion. People feel that they find some sort of connection with the divine, and the reasoning comes later. Cartoonist Zach Weiner sums up why “reason” simply doesn’t work in converting people quite succinctly and trenchantly:
None of the various philosophical arguments for the existence of God will get you down to a specific denomination. Realistically, they don’t get you to anything past deism. You will not get someone to join, say, the Southern Baptist Church with either the argument from ontology or teleology or anything else.
All this is ancillary to my titular thesis though. What struck me is her description of herself. She’s conveying the sense that “I used to be a huge atheist, and I converted, so converting atheists is definitely doable”. And I don’t doubt that she is genuine in this belief. I just think it’s naive. It reminds me very much of author Lee Strobel, who’s made a mint selling apologetics books, who makes this same argument in his books. Except he’s a pompous asshole who cares more about his own ego and winning arguments than legitimately discussing religion. Anyway, my point, aside from bashing Strobel, is that this is an argument that comes up, and it’s a misleading one. Because there are different kinds of atheists. Very broadly speaking, you have apathetic atheists, and non-apathetic atheists. That is, varying amounts of apathy in their atheism. A substantial number of people in the “nones” are more-or-less indifferent to religion. They don’t take it seriously. They haven’t dug into it too deep. Our author and Strobel were in this camp, for example. Dropping a couple quotes flippantly is not the same as a studied and systematic disagreement. On the other side are people who have spent a lot of time wrestling with it. Christopher Hitchens would be a celebrity example in this camp (as facile as I find any number of his arguments vis a vis religion).
Religious folks: your success rate with those in the apathy camp is going to be way more plausible than those in the opposite. The road to Damascus scenarios do happen, but they are few and far between. I’m not arguing against proselytizing, I’m just saying that it’s going to cause tension if you assume both groups are equally susceptible. If you’re going to convert a friend, the one who’s never set foot in the church is going to be way more open to changing their mind than the one who grew up in a church and has read the Bible more than you. Not that it’s a guaranteed success, obviously, but thinking that one “none” is as receptive to the message as another is going to cause some hurt. It’s like anything else. You want to convince a friend to vote for a politician you like, a friend without any strong interest in politics is going to be easier to persuade than your friend who vehemently opposes you on every other issue. Pro tip: regardless, you still have to be their friend, even if they never change their mind.